From: Allan Goodall <agoodall@a...>
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 17:42:06 +0000
Subject: [SG2] Alternate Quick Combat Resolution (Modified Impact Versus Armour Procedure)
This house rule is part of my quest to speed up combat resolution in Stargrunt II. I've playtested the following rule and it seems to work rather well, with some caveats explained in the design notes at the bottom. This is used as an alternative to the quick combat resolution system in the book. ARMOUR RATING SYSTEM Figures do not have armour dice. Instead, they have an armour rating. The armour rating is equal to the armour die in the book divided in half. For example, a figure with an armour rating of D8 would have an armour rating of 4. The armour ratings look like this: Armour Die Armour Rating N/A 1 D4 2 D6 3 D8 4 D10 5 D12 6 The armour rating is calculated _after_ any armour dice shifts. A figure in D8 armour behind hard cover would have D12 armour, which results in an armour rating of 6. A D12 Power Armour figure behind soft cover already has the maximum die possible for armour, so it would continue to have an armour rating of 6. The combat resolution system remains the same up to, and including, the calculation of the number of potential casualties. The attacking player rolls a number of impact dice equal to the number of potential casualties. These dice are compared to the armour rating of the figures in the squad. If an impact die exceeds the armour rating, one of the potential casualties is wounded. If the impact die exceeds twice the armour rating, one of the potential casualties is killed. Otherwise, the armour protected the potential casualty. (The procedure is essentially the same as if the defending player rolled his armour dice at once and all the dice rolled the same number.) Once the number of wounded and killed figures is determined, roll randomly to see which figures were wounded and which were killed, and complete the combat resolution phase as normal. To speed up combat even further, players should round off fractional potential casualties instead of rolling for the fraction. For instance, if there are 2 and 7/8 potential casualties, the players should choose to round up the potential casualties to 3 (or, if they prefer less bloody conflicts, round down to 2). Design Notes SG2 combat resolution takes a long time, a little too long, in my opinion. It only takes a single opposed die roll to see if a squad misses or suppresses an opposing squad. The number of dice rolls goes way up when a unit hits the target and causes casualties. This is because of the armour roll. You have to make an opposed die roll for each potential casualty. You can't just roll a bunch of dice at once and get the results for all the figures. The benefit of this house rule is speed. Opposed rolls are slower than unopposed rolls. Each player has to pick up the correct dice and roll them. In multi-player situations there is a good chance that at least one of these players will be distracted. Often one of the players wants to be the last one to roll, and so he waits until his opponent has rolled the dice before he rolls his. In testing, a combat that resulted in three or more potential casualties took between two thirds and half as long to resolve in this system than in the regular system. This is simply because it's faster for one player to pick up three dice and compare it to a rating number than it is for two players to dice off against each other three ore more times. Another benefit is that you can have figures with an armour rating of 1. This would be suitable for non-combatants without any armour (such as unarmed townspeople). There are a couple of caveats to this system. There is a slightly higher chance of scoring a casualty under this system than under the regular combat resolution system. The average roll for D8 armour is 4.5, while in this system the armour rating is a 4. This doesn't have a huge effect in the game. If players are worried about it, simply round down all fractional potential casualties. Example: if there were 2 and 7/8 potential casualties, the players would round this down to 2. With this house rule it is impossible to wound a figure in D8 armour or better with a weapon with a D4 impact. Likewise, a figure in D12 power armour is impervious to weapons with a D6 impact or lower. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Should an archaic musket have _any_ chance of wounding someone in power armour? Scenarios where there is that great a discrepancy between impact rating and armour rating are fairly rare. Only archaic firearms have D4 impact, and only light autopistols and anti-armour submunitions against dispersed targets have D6 impact. If it's an issue for players, they can simply choose to use the regular combat resolution whenever there is a difference of three die types or more between the impact die and the armour die. (The anti-armour submunitions issue is the biggie here. A simple solution is to shift the impact up one versus PA, as they are dispersed like infantry but armoured like light vehicles.) With this system it is impossible for weapons with an impact die of D10 or less to roll more than twice the armour rating of power armour troops (5 or 6). This means that it's impossible to kill a power armour trooper outright, unless the same trooper takes two hits in the same fire combat. In playtesting this tends to strengthen power armour troops. Comments I received suggest that this was actually a _welcome_ change. PA troops could still be killed (if one trooper took two hits in the same combat resolution, or if a 1 was rolled on the trooper's recovery roll), and as mentioned above they are slightly more likely to be wounded than in the regular combat resolution system. What this house rule does is eliminate some of the quirky situations, like a musket rolling a 2 on a D4 killing a PA trooper whose armour roll was a 1. Note that the quick combat resolution system in the rule book has this same issue, as each potential casualty is simply treated as a wounded figure. The quick combat system in the rulebook applies this effect to all figures, not just PA. Again, if this bothers players they may want to use the regular combat resolution system against PA. Any questions and comments are welcome!